


no one (will ever love you)

by redrumming



Category: Glee
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Unhealthy Relationships, depiction of unspecified mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 18:37:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5795527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redrumming/pseuds/redrumming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is that fear that resides within each of us, that fear that propels us, transforms us into people we don’t want to think we are. Fear, the puppet master, and Blaine, the puppet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no one (will ever love you)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in 2014, unpublished. Un-betaed (endless apologies for my commas, but I actually like them that way). I have a very specific interpretation of Blaine as a character (and by extension Klaine) only because I relate to him so much. If you're not averse to fandom wank, see end notes.

1.

His brother was his childhood hero.

They had quite a few years to separate them, but not enough to ensure Blaine didn’t suffer teasing, bullying, and being bossed around by an immature older brother. Everyone knew Cooper, but Blaine was never a mere appendage, never played second fiddle; he knew how to commandeer his own spotlight.

The hero-worship got in the way of them becoming close, and as they grew older, the age difference played a factor too. Despite circumstances being as they were, they shared common interests. Blaine was something of a musical prodigy, while Cooper took the local children’s theatre by storm with his natural charm and enviable slick hair. The brothers put on performances at home when they were younger, sung in talent shows and starred in local productions, one never upstaging another because one always came before the other.

Cooper booked a commercial at age 6. Blaine booked a commercial at age 6, years down the road. It wasn’t emulation, it was something they _shared_. When Cooper graduated from college with a degree in performing arts, Blaine attended the ceremony and cheered for him.

The realization came a few years later, took a while to sink in. It seemed to slowly percolate just under the surface of Blaine’s awareness, building up until it took him abruptly one day – Cooper was a bad actor.

It was summer. Blaine rubbed sleep away from his eyes as he padded softly down the stairs. Cooper was home for a rare visit, and Blaine came upon him in the kitchen, having a heated argument with his agent. It sounded bad. 

‘He’s bad,’ Blaine realized; the words did not feel foreign as he tested them out. ‘He’s not good.’

And of course he’d come to fully understand this as he watched Cooper pacing the floor, hands clenching and unclenching, face pinched in a way he couldn’t control. Not Cooper on stage or behind a camera, where all he had to do was turn on his toothpaste commercial smile and make an audience forget. The thought wasn’t so much a slap to the face for Blaine, as a crystallizing moment, as coming to terms with something that had existed as whispery suggestions inside his head all this while: ‘I’m better than him.’

2.

His parents were around. They were always there, they just didn’t know what to do with him. Cooper had been easy. But then again, Cooper wasn’t gay, Blaine reasoned. There must be a reason why it was so hard for him to keep his parent’s attention and affections. It wasn’t like Cooper was stealing the lime light. Cooper had nothing that Blaine didn’t have, could do nothing that Blaine couldn’t do better.

They favored Cooper. It was obvious to Blaine. Discovering he liked boys and had no interest in girls was a relief to Blaine for what were probably all the wrong reasons. He was gay. Of course his parents didn’t like him; he was gay.

“We love you,” was what his mother had said. She had a hand in his curls, hair that matched her own unruly mop. Hair that Blaine hated. He didn’t feel particularly inclined to believe her, or his father, so he didn’t say it back. He said thank you, though, for allowing him to go to Dalton. For allowing him a fresh start.

The subject of his parents, of his family in general, was always something that bothered him like a hangnail would. Something just felt off. At first, it had been a normal thing that all kids fancied, to think that you were adopted and imagine being told one day when you’re old enough, imagine meeting up with and being apart of your _real_ family. But Blaine didn’t really have a problem with his parents, never did. Even after he was old enough to rid himself of such fantasies, he never felt settled in his own home.

The truth of it was that he wanted actual animosity instead of this uneasy stalemate. He didn’t like the truth.

3.

Blaine didn’t know when he started lying.

The thing is, once he started, he couldn’t stop. He came home at the end of the day, laid in bed like anyone else trying to sleep, failed to like anyone else who had problems that only made themselves loud in a quiet night.

He knew he was lying, he was cognizant every word of every sentence. He knew he should stop. That’s what he told himself at night time. In the morning, Blaine believed again (that he was doing the right thing, that he was telling the truth; it changed from day to day).

He had lied to his parents for three days straight in freshman year until the school called to inquire about his string of absences. Then, Dalton. Blaine had wanted to go there ever since he’d heard of their zero-tolerance policy, figured that in an environment where some people were out and others were friendly, he’d have the space and support to be a person he could be proud of. To be himself (and if ‘himself’ was a constructed and artificial identity, well, it’s _high school_ ).

On his first day of school, Blaine told a lie.

He avoided thinking about it all, the entire fantasy back-story his single lie had snowballed into, because sue him, he liked the attention. He was a friendly guy, he’d have made friends regardless of what his deal was, but this kept people interested. This kept people coming _back_.

They came to him for advice, and while friendship was nice, it was secondary to being held in high regard. People looked up to him, older guys, upperclassmen, because they thought he was brave. And fuck it, you know? Blaine was brave. He’d been through a lot. Just a different lot than what he’d told them, that’s all. 

He met Kurt, lost and scared, twirling around hopelessly on the staircase looking for someone to take him in. Blaine didn’t want to be anyone’s keeper, but Kurt reminded him of the other freshman gays he’d adopted that year. He hadn’t meant to become their keeper, either. His friends, like Wes and David, had just kept referring them to him like he was some sort of authority.

Blaine fixed his cuff-links, zeroed his sight on Kurt. In a sense, he _was_ an authority, here at Dalton, a liberal school with progressive policies, but not diverse enough to avoid missteps like tokenizing certain students. If there was someone wondering around dressed in a godawful imitation of the uniform, then Blaine’s got to step up to the mantel he’s already on and show the guy why the Warblers owned the school.

If he went a bit overboard with the hand-holding and the winking, well. People fell in love with him sooner or later, drawn in by his charm. He wasn’t letting Kurt on, wouldn’t do that to anyone. The way Blaine saw it, if people fell in love with him, it was an inevitability on their part, but not of much concern otherwise.

It was Jeff who asked a question he knew some other people must be wondering at that point. Quiet, meek Jeff who just went along with whatever Nick or the upperclassmen decreed, who just went along with Blaine. But he was observant and had sharp insights, sharper questions. 

“Why does everyone like you, Blaine?” he asked one night.

Jeff was stoned, so was Nick who was in the corner eating his way through a large pizza by himself. Blaine didn’t partake in bonding activities facilitated by drugs, but he didn’t mind. 

“Doesn’t make sense. It’s kind of creepy,” Jeff concluded, giggling lightly and nudging Blaine with a toe to elicit an answer.

Blaine didn’t have one. He was just one of those people others gravitated towards, with or without his fictitious past. Was it a burden sometimes? Sure. But he’s learned to use it to his advantage. Jeff’s right, it didn’t make any sense. Charm was just something you had, or you didn’t. 

4.

He should stop lying. He decided to strengthen his resolve after being friends with Kurt for a while. Kurt was honest, to a fault.

Everything about him kind of grated on Blaine, for a reason he couldn’t figure out until it dawned on him one day, cutting himself while shaving. That Kurt was the story he’d told everyone he was. Bullied, shoved around, physically assaulted and ran out of school. That Kurt was brave. And Blaine. Blaine had just cut himself shaving on a stretch of skin that didn’t even grow hair.

Every time Kurt looked at him, calculating, Blaine would beam back at him, the smile plastered-on and chipping away slowly with time. But more often than not, Kurt showered him with adoring, pining looks that made Blaine feel safe and wanted.

Blaine tried to ignore the spectacularly obvious crush, because he didn’t feel the same way. He thought it was cute, though, and for Christmas decided to humor the guy with a song. It wasn’t mean-spirited, he was throwing Kurt a bone, a great-job-on-surviving-Dalton-so-far duet, not anything else.

He heard a bit of Kurt’s conversation with his ex-teacher, heard Kurt saying he was in love with Blaine. Honest to a fault.

There came more nights, then, of Blaine deep in thought on how to restructure his life, how to dig himself out of the grave he’d willingly climbed into. He came out effortlessly, to his family, at his previous school, at Dalton. He didn’t know how well people would take it if he came out about some of the lies he’d told.

Badly, he guessed.

Kurt’s face would fall.

And so, it continued.

5.

Really, the lies weren’t so bad.

When the freshman gays came up to him, shy but determined, for advice on sex, he paused before answering. He could admit to his own inexperience. Or.

Somehow it got around. The upperclassmen looked at him, some disbelieving, but most with respect. Everyone agreed when Blaine suggested taking the Warblers in a different direction. Sexy. Kurt struggled. It was hard to watch how badly he struggled, and the following conversation with him led Blaine to believe the next course of action should be a conversation with Burt Hummel.

It was an accident, he didn’t even mean to let it slip so far off course, but it had felt right in the moment, and Blaine always felt like he knew what was best for a moment. He had natural instincts, something which Cooper lacked. So he stood in Burt Hummel’s autoshop, making an impassioned speech, throwing in insinuations of his parents' mistreatment, his dad wanting to rebuild cars with him as a macho, straight-male bonding activity. That was the accident. He started talking. He couldn’t stop.

Blaine went and grabbed a cup at The Lima Bean on the drive back to Dalton and one of the voices inside him was insistent, kept picking and picking his conversation with Burt apart until he was forced to admit to himself that it was a mistake, it was another lie he had added on top of the existing landfill.

His hands shook a little when he started the car. He shouldn’t have mentioned the bit about his dad. Blaine was jealous of Kurt’s relationship with his father, sure, anyone would be, but he didn’t have to go and say _that_.

6.

His friends, admirers, continued to take him at face value. Despite inconsistencies in his stories, nobody called him out on anything. That wasn’t what happened.

It wasn’t Jeff who asked this time, but Kurt, even though a month had passed that the wound from Valentine’s Day shouldn’t even be fresh anymore. He’d started to grow weary of Blaine, hung out with him less now and stuck close to Nick and Jeff. Nobody noticed much because Blaine kept the same wide smile on his face, while Kurt looked pensive all the time. 

“How do you do it?” Kurt asked him, and it took Blaine by surprise. Kurt sounded demanding, a little snide. Not at all the mumble-soft and endearing way Jeff had approached the question months ago. “How have you only been here for a year, barely, and you’ve already got the entire Warblers under your thumb?” and it sounded  _rude_.

Blaine thought they’ve been talking about him. Kurt, Nick, Jeff. The freshman gays came to him less now, too, and Blaine would sometimes see one of them in a cozy corner of the library with Kurt.

He wasn’t jealous, he was just confused. What could they possibly come to Kurt for that they couldn’t get from him? He wanted to ask, but never knew how to do it appropriately.

The tides were turning at Dalton.

When Kurt’s bird dropped and died, no one even got angry at him. Maybe they all felt sorry for him, Blaine thought, for what he’d been through. Then he realized that they used to feel sorry for Blaine, too, and it had garnered him a place in the Warbler’s inner circle.

Kurt singing Blackbird was the clincher. He could see it on Wes’s face, David’s, Thad’s. Everyone in that room. They had all looked similar when Kurt auditioned for his solo, but that was such a ridiculous song choice, Blaine had no trouble convincing everyone it wasn’t suited to their style. Now Kurt was singing _pop_ , and everyone felt sorry for him, and everyone looked enamored.

Blaine had to do something. 

7.

Later, much later, at NYADA and at their wedding and at all the dinners and events in between and after, people ask Kurt-and-Blaine to tell _their story_. Who liked who first, who made the first move, that sort of thing. And Blaine feels bad, he always has, because he knows he’d be lying, Kurt knows it too now, but Kurt usually takes the lead, spins the tale so flawlessly even Blaine is left breathless by the end.

People always coo, even when Blaine shuffles uncomfortably, and Kurt smiles his Blaine-smile, tired and wearing thin at the edges.

Like everything in their relationship would turn out to be, Blaine had approached it as an acting exercise. The speech he wrote and memorized seemed too cheesy to be true, because it wasn’t true. But the thing is, that Blaine (and Kurt) knows all of this in hindsight. At the time, at 16, Blaine thought it was love, and love deserved grand gestures and grander words.

Whenever he saw Kurt, his heart would beat faster. He wanted to _say_ something, anything, to make sure Kurt never left his side, would stay with him forever, sing duets with him instead of solos. The night after their first kiss, Blaine couldn’t sleep. He figured it was because this was his first relationship. Kurt wanted to be with him. And Blaine. Yes, too. But it was less that Blaine wanted to be with Kurt, and more that he wanted Kurt to be with him, not anybody else.

It never made an actual difference outside of his head, outside of how he felt, so again, he figured, it didn’t matter. This was his first relationship and he was going to make it work. 

8.

Blaine can be selfless, as much as he worried constantly about himself. Worrying about yourself is normal, it’s evolutionary even. But to soothe a nagging conscience, he decided to devote himself to a selfless cause. Kurt needed to be back at McKinley, where he would be happier.

It wasn’t as if much changed after they got together. Kurt’s competitive debut had been well received by the council, so they work on featuring his voice in some of their performances. Blaine worked on sharing, which he figured was only fair, he should want to share everything with Kurt.

But the occasional feature on a song was just that, an occasional feature, and Blaine caught Trent in his musings one day: “He’s got the best voice out of all of us by a mile, and you know I wouldn’t say that lightly. It’s a shame he doesn’t fit with our current model.”

Their current model was Blaine singing lead, with everyone else providing a capella accompaniment and dance moves.

Blaine spent a long time reviewing his motivations following Regionals. He didn’t feel threatened by Kurt. They were together now, he didn’t think it was possible to feel threatened by your other half. Trent was right, however. They couldn’t squander Kurt’s talents, and even though Blaine was starting to feel out the edges of their relationship, started to put feelings into words like ‘love’ and ‘forever’, he actually missed the days when they went to separate schools, when Blaine had a space to call his own and Kurt did too.

Kurt moved back to McKinley without any additional intervention on Blaine’s part.

That was his selfless deed. That was him working on ‘compromise’, something everyone always insisted was key in relationships. Blaine compromised on Kurt moving back to McKinley, but he didn’t think he was going to budge on prom.

Blaine knew it was coming up for Kurt’s school, but there was nothing Blaine wanted less than going back to public high school. He had felt out of sorts at his high school before Dalton, at the Sadie Hawkins dance with his male date. He couldn’t imagine going back and reliving it all.

But then Kurt looked so excited, and absolutely crushed when Blaine told him the story he’d told Wes and David. It had been different at Dalton, Kurt’s coming and going bringing with them a marked shift from Blaine’s status quo. Blaine was weak for Kurt, he’d admit, liked the other guy far too much for his own good, but he was weaker for that look in Kurt’s eyes: pity maybe, concern as well, but underlying it all is awe. Awe that Wes and David expressed with respect and deference, awe in the face of what Blaine had faced and survived through. Or at least claimed he did.

Blaine knew he had people who loved him, but he still lied all the time, hard as he had been trying to stop. Pity and concern were nice. But they didn’t make Blaine feel any better.

In reviewing his motivations, Blaine realized he suddenly didn’t know whether he was being selfless or selfish. It felt more or less like the same thing.

9.

Blaine had fantasies for them. Kurt had fantasies for them. They shared these with each other and tried to keep reality as consistent as possible. Public serenades were always a good thing. Travelling distances to surprise the other with sweeping gestures. They did everything you could possibly categorize as romantic. They had their own Kurt-and-Blaine rhythm, fell into a groove and stayed there like most couples do after they get comfortable with each other.

It was better after Kurt moved back to McKinley, for a while. Blaine was front and center for the Warblers again, he was happy with the way everything was going, he was happy with Kurt. They got pushed out of contention while McKinley advanced, headed for a trip to New York, and Blaine didn’t mind, tried to remain magnanimous. He knew the Warblers making Nationals was a long shot. Then, it all started going wrong at once.

The seniors stepped down from Warbler Council. The juniors stepping up, well, they weren’t homophobic, but they didn’t care about Blaine at all. Cared more about winning. Wanted to scout and recruit like they thought themselves an actual contender in national show choir, and not a newly revitalized a capella group.

He was unable to charm them, and it was fine until it wasn’t enough.

Blaine had Kurt, so he focused on that for the time being, lived vicariously through Kurt’s crazy stories of his McKinley classmates and glee club members. Blaine wasn’t jealous, he just wished the Warblers had the same camaraderie. That they liked him the same way, and it didn’t need to based on the pity that Wes and David had bestowed upon him.

The line between acting and feeling, fantasy and reality, had long ago blurred for Blaine. He didn’t like to think about it, so he didn’t. Instead, he day-dreamed about coffee shop dates where he said his first i-love-you to Kurt, practiced the face he’d make in front of the mirror, imagined Kurt’s equally infatuated reaction.

When he got to play the scene out, Kurt wasn’t as enthusiastic, and he felt it all spiral. The next school year, he showed up first day of school at McKinley.

10.

Some of Blaine’s insecurities included: No one will ever love him because his parents don’t love him, they love Cooper more, God knows why. No one will ever love him because he’s gay. No one will ever love him because he’s gay but he’s inexperienced and never really went through the gay rite of passage that was being bullied out of home and school. No one will ever love him because he doesn’t have a tragic back-story, no sexual escapades to boast of, and only a handful of friends.

And then it became, no one will ever love him because he’s not Kurt. The longer he stayed with Kurt, the deeper that settles into him. It was an irrational thought, among the most irrational ones he’s ever had. But it stays with him. He stays with Kurt, they continue to belong to each other, their fantasies and their realities never stop aligning. The longer they stay together, the more Blaine gets to prove himself wrong. People will love him, Kurt will love him.

It’s stupid because it’s the usual. Blaine doesn’t have a story to tell that’s any more interesting than anyone else has to offer. Insecurities. That’s it. That’s all he has to his name. He just wanted more for himself, that’s all he ever wanted, and nobody can fault him for that part, at least.

Years have passed; it becomes unacceptable. Maybe it stopped being acceptable that night in Kurt’s car, parked in front of a seedy gay bar, streetlights overhead flickering as erratically as the pounding of Blaine’s heart. But Blaine doesn’t want to talk about what is or is not acceptable, what ends justified his meandering, senseless means.

Jeff had called it when he said it didn’t make sense. Blaine had quietly agreed, even then, decided to leave it up to the fates which seemed to favor him, shielded him even.

Blaine never did answer Kurt’s question, how did he do it. At NYADA, when Blaine was struggling standing next to Kurt’s brighter light, he wondered too. How had he done it?

He had done it the only way he knew how. He had let his fear propel him forward, the same fear that carved out enemies for him to conquer, bullies to stand up to, parents and brothers to reconcile with, and boyfriends who hurt you over and over again.

Blaine goes to sleep at night, Kurt beside him. There is a distance that they don’t talk about. Sometimes there are pillows in the middle of the bed, to separate them. Kurt takes pills to sleep now. Blaine pretends he doesn’t need them and he lets himself get carried away by his thoughts. No one will ever love him because he’s a liar. No one will ever love him because he’s Blaine. No one will ever love him.

At night he despairs, and in the morning he believes again. So it continues.

**Author's Note:**

> As someone who was an active member of both Klaine and anti-Klaine/Blaine communities (at different times), I never quite found a balance between criticism and artistic license that reflected the portrayal of Blaine's character onscreen. Honestly, he's a compelling character, one that I relate to the most. I wish I had found spaces to express my interpretation of his character through fic and meta while the fandom was still active, but with a healthy amount of distance from the wank, I can look through all the unpublished fics I wrote as therapy and feel happy with them. Happy enough to publish and tag as Klaine in the hopes that someone else too can enjoy this interpretation (and by enjoy I mean wallow in the angst of it all with me).


End file.
